Fall in on-licences 1905 - 1920

Time for yet more numbers. All culled from my new favourite book, the 1922 Brewers' Almanack.

If you think pub closures are bad currently, you should take a look at what happened just before WW I. The 1904 Licensing Act, introduced by a Liberal government with strong links to the temperance movement, gave Licensing Magistrates powers to refuse the renewal of licences for a vairiety of reasons. For example, if it was thought that there morepubs in an area than necessary. Licences could also be refused if a pub was considered to harbour thieves or if its trade was considered inefficient.

Temperance nutcases were obsessed with pubs providing unnecessary tempatation and loved having them closed down. They were helped by temperance advocates being Licensing Magistrates while members of the pub and brewing trade were prohibited from doing so. It lead to a very large number of pub closuress , as you can see in the table.

Licence holders of pubs deemed superfluous to requirements were usually paid compensation, this being the equivalent to the difference in value of the premises with and without a licence. Ones closed for breaking the rules received none. The compensation was paid from a levy imposed on licences.

Funnily enough, the pace of closures slowed after the outbreak of WW I. For the 15 years covered, an average of just over 1,000 pubs closed annually, with very small numbers of new licences being issued. That's an average of 20 a week. Getting a new licence became extremely difficult. A situation that continued until the 1970s.

For example, if a brewery wanted to build a new pub on an estate, it generally had to surrender one or more licences, usually in inner-city areas considered to have too many pubs.

Fall in on-licences 1905 - 1920
Year ended Dec. 31.	Refused with compensation.	Refused without compensation	Licences lapsed	New licences granted.	Net decrease.
1905	194	80	363	53	584
1906	892	69	435	56	1,340
1907	1,735	48	322	68	2,037
1908	1,236	30	253	47	1,472
1909	1,290	35	286	60	1,561
1910	993	27	250	33	1,237
1911	978	20	444	44	1,398
1912	849	18	296	53	1,110
1913	842	24	265	52	1,079
1914	844	13	225	48	1,034
1915	574	11	177	25	737
1916	383	22	239	28	616
1917	353	34	271	29	629
1918	400	19	195	14	600
1919	498	11	247	54	702
1920	526	11	340	71	806
Totals	12,587	472	4,608	725	16,942
Averages	787	30	288	45	1,059
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1922, page 100.

Pub closures (part two)

How many pubs are really closing in Britain? The British Beer and Pub Association reckons 42 a week.

If 52 pubs are closing a week, that means 2,704 will close their doors forever in 2009. It'll be easy to check. The BBPA's own Statistical Handbook publishes the number of pub licences. We just have to wait 18 months or so. For the 2011 edition. And compare the number of licences in 2009 and 2010.

Assuming I can remember to check in 2011, I'm starting a sweepstake. Guess the number of pubs that close in 2009. Again, assuming I remember, there will be a prize of some sort for whoever gets closest. Probably some of my tacky merchandise.

I'll kick off with 1,237. What do you reckon?

Decline in pub licences 1905 - 1952

I managed to unearth some more figures for pub closures. I though I'd share them with you.

This particular set of figures highlights the forced closures caused by the authorities revoking licences. They appear in the "refused" columns. Pubs that closed for economic reasons are in the "Licences lapsed" column.


The decline was sharpest in the first period covered, almost 7,000 pubs at an average of just under 27 a week. The next five years were barely any better, with over 22 pubs closing each weak. Not much fewer than 12,000 pubs disappeared in just 10 years.

Things aren't quite as bad as that yet. We'll need to wait another 9 years to see if the first decades of the 21st century will be as bad for pubs as those at the start of the 20th century. I hope they aren't.

Pub closures

Time for a "putting things into perspective" post. On the topic of disappearing pubs.

Things soon get hyped up. Especially when newspapers get involved. They love throwing around terms like "unprecedented" and "never before". It applies to more than just the beer worrld, but I'm limiting myself. To just pubs.

"Pubs closing at an unprecedented rate." That's the current refrain. But how true is it? I just happen to have the figures for the number of pubs in England and Wales for the period 1900 to 2004. Let's take a look at them, shall we?

In 1900 there were 102,189 pubs in England and Wales. That's the time when local magistrates were actively trying to reduce the number of pubs. You can see just how successful they were. By 1920 there were just 83,432, a drop of 18,757. On average, just over 2.5 pubs closed every day throughout that 20 year period. While at the same time the population increased by 16%. While in 1900 there were 298 people per pub, by 1920 it was 422. So, taking into account population changes, the number of pubs fell by a massive 41%.

After 1920, the number of pubs continued to decline, but at a much slower rate. The nadir was reached in 1972, when just 63,732 remained. That's slightly more than one a day.



The next bit is what surprised me. The number of pubs then began to increase again. In 2004, the last year I've got figures for, it was up to 81,455. An increase of 17,723, a rate of 1.5 new pubs per day. All the pub losses from the 1920's to the 1970's had bee wiped out. I was gob-smacked when I realised that the number of pubs had been increasing all through my drinking life.

This graph makes the long-term trends very clear:



It's sad that many landlords are losing their businesses and their homes. But let's not get hysterical. The rate of closures isn't "unprecedented". Painful, but not unprecedented.